Hacking Update, Safety for You!

After two days of trying to sort everything out, (it still isn't), I ran into a friend that is a very smart techie.  She is a certified Hacker herself, which she uses in her job to hack back at people that try to hack her companies website and/or computers.  So after telling her the brief synopsis of what happened and how I thought that it occurred she told me that it was most likely NOT my phone being hacked.  That is technically more difficult and most evil (my term, not hers) hackers go for the easy kill. 

My techie friend said that most likely they came through my computer.  I was shocked.  No way, I said, I am so careful.  She asked if my firewall is up.  If it is not, they can access your computer and see everything!  Of course, I had firewalls.  She said that having two firewalls up is like having two locks on your door, most thieves won't bother going through two, but they will go through one.  It is apparently not that hard.  I came home and I did have two, windows firewall and my Norton Antivirus also had one.  She suggested ZoneAlarm Firewall which is free.  I put that on also.  So now I have three.  Bring it on evil hackers.  On second thought...don't. 

When I got home and started talking to Mike I gasped.  It was HIS computer!  I had just used his in the last week to check my email.  And he doesn't keep his laptop from work current.  No antivirus and only one firewall-which the definitions were not up to date.  AAAGGGGHHHH!  Mike said, "Ooops!"  So I spent the next hour or two downloading the free Norton Antivirus from our Comcast account, updating and scheduling automatic updates for his windows firewall and then installing the ZoneAlarm firewall too.  My friend will be coming over later this week to hack back at the person(s) that did this to us and get back at him.  In a very legal way of REPORTING them to the POLICE.  Jerk(s). 

She is also going to help me get encryption for my computer passwords, because did you know that there is also software out there that they can put on your computer to record all of your keystrokes, send them to themselves as a text, and steal your passwords. I will pass that information along to you later also. 

Sleep well my friends.  Hopefully my pain will become your aid and protection.

Oh, and don't use your husbands computer if it isn't protected.